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[Magic Mushroom]

Bullet sponge wave shooting and bland climbing sections were super duper boring. Uncharted 2 is probably the most overrated game of the last gen.

Nah, UC has some of the most dynamic combat out there which 4 looks set to take to the next level. And there are no bullet sponges, unless you forget headshots, power weapons and grenades exist.

I like a harsh stance from critics, but they should not give all those shallow open world games a free pass.

 

[Jac_Solar]

.....

 

[TrojanBlade]

So by this BS logic Halo 5 better do something so new and re-invent the FPS genre to get to 90s or even 80s because if it its still looks like Halo and plays like the old Halos it probably should get scores around 60s or 70s? Well guess what it will still be a Halo game and mostly play the same and it will still get high scores from these same reviewers who for some reason had very high expectations from The Order and it failed the gaming universe. Some games are just media darlings and get special treatment. Its just a fact.

I know the Order doesn't deserve 8s or 9s but its a shame when a game with such high polish and quality is given 1s, 2s or 4s.

 

[Deleted member 1235]

Most importantly, we’re out of the honeymoon period with next-gen: neither the PS4 nor the Xbox One has truly had a game that made us say: yep, that’s worth it

whereas the wii U hits it out the park on every major release and sells like horseshit. in conclusion nothing makes any sense.

 

[RedStep]

Yeah, and that's why Sunset Overdrive scored 9s ..............

Sunset Overdrive is a great game (with plenty of content, actual gameplay, MP, etc), so what's your point?

 

[Astral Dog]

Again.

Interesting Article, its true, The Order 1886 is not a bad game, it doesn't deserve to be bashed, its just a mediocre title that could be far more, but isn't, a 65 is not really that bad, cult classics have around that rating and are remembered fondly, its the expectations that hurt it, people expect every anticipated game, more if its an exclusive to have above 90 Metacritic, the expectations of a next gen experience, of the marketing campaign, the graphics, "greatness awaits", etc.

last years of 360/PS 3 people were conditioned to expect high ratings for every anticipated game, this makes the industry volatile , if a game gets 80 to 90 it should be a reason to expect a very good game, not garbage, for example. even 70 should not be seen as bad, but as a flawed game with many qualities.

whereas the wii U hits it out the park on every major release and sells like horseshit. in conclusion nothing makes any sense.

People exaggerate the importance of Metacritic, for better or worse the market is not dictated by it, i expect the Order to sell close to 2 million

 

[Three]

The first is that the videogame community, reviewers and consumers alike, got sort of burned over the course of the last year.
Most importantly, we’re out of the honeymoon period with next-gen: neither the PS4 nor the Xbox One has truly had a game that made us say: yep, that’s worth it

Well, when Ryse reviewed worse than the Order we were still in the honeymoon period. When MCC was getting 9s we were out of the honeymoon period. So I can't say the evidence agrees with that.

Here's my theory instead, reviewers try to align themselves with what they think is popular opinion at the time. There is no point trying to swim upstream for them. They base their arbitrary scores on the publics perception of the game at that moment. They're not immune to memes, whether it's false hype or negative prejudice.

 

[GravityMan]

The Forbes contributor is overthinking it. I'm not yet convinced that the review landscape has changed all that much.

I don't think The Order: 1886 would have gotten a 90 or 95 metascore 4-6 years ago either. Standards do change, sure...but the game would've averaged around 75 tops if it came out 6 years ago. Boring is boring, regardless of era.

Lair was a highly-anticipated PS3 game with strong visuals that came out in the summer of 2007, and it got destroyed by reviewers (worse than The Order: 1886).

Even if reviewers are being harsher nowadays, I don't think it'll matter much in terms of game quality or sales. Game quality on average won't improve. Poor management is the main reason why many mediocre/bad games turn out that way.

 

[Manabanana]

whereas the wii U hits it out the park on every major release and sells like horseshit. in conclusion nothing makes any sense.

I think it makes perfect sense. Games are becoming more like movies, judged critically by their content rather than technical craft. We're at a point where bugs and performance should be a thing of the past, and merit comes in the form of original ideas and interesting choices. Some of my favorite films last year are nowhere near the Oscars, for instance, but to me had far more interesting stories and performances than the regular high-profile drama flair that's lauded about each year.

Marketability still has a lot to do with it, and it's a popularity contest now more than ever. The Walking Dead not but two years ago was hailed as many sites' GOTY to great surprise, but that doesn't mean more interesting projects aren't regularly ignored for something that will attach to a large audience.

Thier is right about one thing, we want content that demands our attention. Hopefully, that kind of game isn't dismissed based on being a Wii U or Vita game, or whatever qualifies a conspiracy these days.

 

[Oersted]

A not good game would have gotten a 80 score on average? First of all, on which grounds is that claim made and secondly, if the claim is actually true, the landscape changed for the better.

 

[Lord Error]

I don't think The Order: 1886 would have gotten a 90 or 95 metascore 4-6 years ago either. Standards do change, sure...but the game would've averaged around 75 tops if it came out 6 years ago. Boring is boring, regardless of era.

Lair was a highly-anticipated PS3 game with strong visuals that came out in the summer of 2007, and it got destroyed by reviewers (worse than The Order: 1886).

Boring can become boring if you play the same kind of thing over and over. If TO1886 was the first ever TPS cover shooter, looking back then like it does now, I think it would literally blow people's minds, and made them far more forgiving on any of its shortcomings. Comparing it with Lair that was a broken game through and through mechanically, conceptually and technologically, is not a good form. Shooting is very good in The Order, mechanically. I could easily see someone who hasn't been tired of TPS games not having any problems with it.

 

[LoveCake]

I think the age of social media/games specific forums like GAF (including YT, Twitch) hitting mainstream combined with the incessant rise of DLC stealth price rise, reviewers have had to react because if enough people dislike a game where a review site has given the game a high score, trust will be eroded in that site, so they now seem to be being more harsh than before, the thing though is are they being harsh?

With the issues recently the last few years, i'm not going to be pre-ordering anything else (have Project CARS LE PS4, only) games-wise because it it too much of a risk now, what with huge day one patches, missing content in the form of day one DLC etc etc.

What really started making me think this way was getting a WiiU at launch, it may not be a bad decision now, but it was in the early days, but the games released now have just reached a point where it is pointless in buying on day one unless it is a in-house NIntendo legacy game, Mario, Zelda etc or a R* game GTA specifically these are the only games i would consider pre-ordering.

I think this gen X1/PS4 the gaming landscape as a whole has changed, grown up maybe & the reviewers have had to do the same.

In regards to The Order 1886, if the dev is going to make a cinematic game bordering on a interactive film, then can the dev really complain if it is going to be reviewed like a film thus be judged more critically?

 

[CosmicQueso]

Hell even Homefront has a 70. And that game is hot garbage.

Homefront's multiplayer was fantastic.

 

[EL CUCO]

I don't think that there's any truth to it. And a good illutration of that is the Master Chief Collection

Polygon


9.5

GameTrailers


9.3

Game Informer


9.25

IGN


9

Joystiq


9

Eurogamer


9

USgamer


9

Destructoid


9

Super hyped collection from major franchise? Doesn't work like it's supposed to three months after release and yet look at those comments and scores.

Should be in OP.

 

[Fdkn]

The problem with review scores is that they lack context and they are highly inconsistent.

The hot topic is now The order, so I'll make my example around it:

The Order probably isn't a great game for what I've read and seen, and when you compare it with the pinacle of the genre like Uncharted 2 or Gears of War, it should suffer.

But when the game is scoring lower than Wet, Stranglehold, The 50Cent Games, Bionic Commando 2009, Dark Sector... you can't really give so much credit to the scores, because the expectations from those games are so different than the comparison is flawed.

The difference in expectations is easy to see on iterative but improved sequels too.

Infamous is the best rated game on the franchise, but if you play all 3 of them today, is hard to argue that is also the worst of them

Dragon Age Inquisition is considered the best installment of the series but it sits at 85 while Origins got 91.

And so on.

 

[SeanR1221]

Homefront's multiplayer was fantastic.

I literally played one round and hated it. The whole game felt so janky :/

 

[RipperGrim]

I disagree. AC unity, Halo MCC and BF4 all got extremely lenient reviews when they should be extremely penalized for their states at launch, hell MCC is still a problem apparently and no reviews have been updated to reflect this or anything.

I think people are just reacting extremely to The Orders poor review scores.

 

[JayhawkerStL]

The Order is not a shit game. But rather it is just a poor excuse for a game. When it is 25% cutscenes and a lot of forced walking designed to break-up repetitive and uninspired gameplay, that is a problem that reviewers should ding it for.

We all have plenty of options for entertainment. In the golden age of TV, there are far better ways to be told a story if a game is light on "gameplay."

 

[GavinUK86]

On top of that, the marketing team for The Order: 1886 seemed to be relying primarily on the graphics, but nobody really cares about polygon counts anymore.

I think you'll find you're wrong there.

 

[Final Verdict]

They should not be reviewing the MP aspect of games at controlled events in the first place. It is simply not playing the game under real-world conditions that the rest of us have to experience when we buy software.

I agree, but they usually only do those things when a game is either MP only, or heavily reliant on MP, because just about every game has MP in it now days, so if they waited for real world conditions with each game to test it's MP portion out, then we wouldn't get early reviews for just about anything.

So yeah, I think that review flagging is the best thing to do (for games that have SP & MP), or is the game is MP only, then just do a review in progress/scoreless review until the servers have been tested and all......I think there is a website that already does review 'flags' or whatever, but I can't remember who they are.

 

[Kenshin001]

Which game that got 90 on MC 4 years ago are they comparing it to? Seems kind of a ridiculous thing to say, especially given the wealth of quality TPS that had been released by that time. RAD made some fundamental design errors that other devs wouldn't have made had they made The Order. Simple as that. It was interesting seeing Cliff Bleszinski's take on the game because you could see he could have made it better.

A lot of the lower scores for other games are just series fatigue.

 

[Inuhanyou]

This article is wrong from the pure fact that a cinematic game in the vein of the order called TLOU got critically acclaimed up the asshole 2 years ago, and again last year.

Nothing is changing, there are just games that are so egregious at getting things wrong right off the bat, the sentiment is shared across enough outlets to get bad scores. The Order is one of those games.

 

[erawsd]

whereas the wii U hits it out the park on every major release and sells like horseshit. in conclusion nothing makes any sense.

I think a lot of that is due to a lack of confidence. Most people are only going to buy one console and its not just for the games that are available today, its for the games that will be out for the next 3-4 years. I love my WiiU to death but if you made me choose, I'd still take the PS4 because I have more confidence in Sony and its strong third party support to deliver in the long run.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I think a lot of that is due to a lack of confidence. Most people are only going to buy one console and its not just for the games that are available today, its for the games that will be out for the next 3-4 years. I love my WiiU to death but if you made me choose, I'd still take the PS4 because I have more confidence in Sony and its strong third party support to deliver in the long run.

I think this is correct. Even though Nintendo's franchises have always been gold and anything Nintendo touches usually is amazing, i could not live with just their output when it comes right down to it. I had to make a choice between investing in my Wii U and investing in my PS4, and my decision came down to PS having historically a larger more diverse selection of titles, both first party and third.

Yeah there are some that may be middling and some that are shit, but i'll just as likely find as many that i'd consider good or absolutely great.

 

[zero shift]

It’s the sort of game that I would have expected to get an 80 on Metacritic two years ago, a 90 four years ago, and a 95 six years ago. Not that Metacritic is the be all end all, but right now The Order: 1886 sits at a 65, with a user score of 5.6. My reason for this is simple: that’s the score it deserves. The real reason is a little more complicated

Never understood this way of thinking. A good is a good game. If a game doesn't "hold up" it likely wasn't good to begin with.

 

[Alo0oy]

Uncharted 2 had amazing spectacle and production values for its time, but I'd agree the gameplay itself wasn't anything special. It had average third person shooting mechanics, puzzle, melee combat, boss fights and stealth sections. The technical aspects (animation, voice acting, graphics, sound design) are all top notch but in no way is the game itself without flaws.

Enlighten me & point me to a TPS that gives you free-movement the way UC does. If UC's gameplay "wasn't anything special", then no other third person shooter is, since UC is the least restrictive game (gameplay-wise) in its genre.

 

[Shining Sunshine]

Meanwhile broken games like Halo MCC gets 9's.

Higher standard my ass.

 

[MrMephistoX]

Why do Forbes contributors get the Scarlett letter of "blogger"? What makes them any less qualified than the clowns at Polygon? If anything, the Forbes articles are better researched and more thought provoking.

I know right? Most of the best non Game writers,like Eric Jackson who's dine great work on Yahoo!, are contributors.

 

[Chie Satonaka]

This is true in the matter of exclusives, but the third party support has already made both or at least one or the other worth owning. I get that this isn't what the article or topic is about, but apart from a lack of good exclusives, both consoles still have a number of great games to play on them.

I disagree.

I know my situation isn't everyone's, but the third party selection on both machines is a lot of "more of the same" to me, especially considering I also own a gaming PC.

I have no doubt that the PS4 will be an amazing purchase eventually. In fact, there's at least four games I can think of off the top of my head that I will buy the system for. But I agree with his commentary. There's nothing on either system that made that purchase a mandatory buy, and I'm still really surprised that the PS4 has sold so many units despite that.

Yes, I know, different tastes and whatever. People really like the third party lineup, and that's fine.

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

Why do Forbes contributors get the Scarlett letter of "blogger"? What makes them any less qualified than the clowns at Polygon? If anything, the Forbes articles are better researched and more thought provoking.

Something I've always wondered. The quality of the Forbes contributors overall seems very high.

We've been allowing them back on since some actually do have real interviews and things with people, but been making sure it's understood exactly who is writing this (that it's not Forbes staff).

That said since literally anyone can post them, we don't hesitate to lock them if we feel they don't really bring anything to the table or the discussion is poor.

Literally anyone can post an article as a Forbes contributor? I guess I don't really understand how it works then.

How are paid Forbes "contributors" any different from Polygon "staff?"

 

[BlackBuzzard]

Meanwhile broken games like Halo MCC gets 9's.

Higher standard my ass.

Yeah lets see how long these "higher standards" last. I bet it wont even get past Battlefield:Hardline.

 

[jsnepo]

And this is why review scores should go away. You just can't put a number to an opinion.

 

[bigjig]

Enlighten me & point me to a TPS that gives you free-movement the way UC does. If UC's gameplay "wasn't anything special", then no other third person shooter is, since UC is the least restrictive game (gameplay-wise) in its genre.

Play Vanquish or even Gears for that matter then come back and tell me that Uncharted's shooting is top class. You fighting waves of bullet sponge enemies with little to no variety in encounter or enemy design. Heck have people forgotten how they had to patch up the aiming mechanics in UC3? 10/10 gameplay my arse

 

[jsnepo]

Play Vanquish or even Gears for that matter then come back and tell me that Uncharted's shooting is top class. You fighting waves of bullet sponge enemies with little to no variety in encounter or enemy design. Heck have people forgotten how they had to patch up the aiming mechanics in UC3? 10/10 gameplay my arse

I'll join you and say I played all three games and can say that Uncharted's shooting is top notch.

The level design and encounters in Uncharted 2 and 3 (the city grounds prior to the hotel, the ship graveyard, the insides of the cruise ship, the mountain village) are well made.

 

[Three]

Play Vanquish or even Gears for that matter then come back and tell me that Uncharted's shooting is top class. You fighting waves of bullet sponge enemies with little to no variety in encounter or enemy design. Heck have people forgotten how they had to patch up the aiming mechanics in UC3?

Haven't played vanquish. I've played gears and all of the uncharted though and I agree with him. The idea that there is no variety in the encounter in uncharted I cannot agree with one bit. In fact I would say its encounters are more varied, not less. There is a good deal of verticality and the climbing/swimming/shooting/melee plays very well with the varied level designs, trains, planes, stealth (though limited), run and gunning, sniping, you name it.

 

[Toxi]

Uncharted 2 from six years ago is more or less at 95 Metacritic. I guess by this logic it would get around 65 if released now.

That's like saying that Daikatana and Wolfenstein: The New Order should get the same scores because they're both first-person shooters. The Order has nothing near the quality of the Uncharted 2 train level or really the rest of Uncharted 2.

 

[Game4life]

Uncharted 2 from six years ago is more or less at 95 Metacritic. I guess by this logic it would get around 65 if released now.

Uncharted 2 is one of the most perfectly paced single player games of all time. Right up there with RE4 in its pacing. Comparing that masterpiece to the shit show known as the Order is a travesty.

 

[atr0cious]

Literally anyone can post an article as a Forbes contributor?

Not true at all.

How are paid Forbes "contributors" any different from Polygon "staff?"

Forbes crew are technically actual journalist.

 

[Toxi]

The constant references to the Masterchief Collection make a poor comparison because A.) MCC's disgustingly broken multiplayer was not something you could review before release, highlighting the problem with reviewing online functionality in games, and B.) Just looking at the completely functional single-player, MCC is still a good game and a better game than The Order for many people.

If anything, Masterchief Collection was a wake-up call that game reviews need to change their approach to games with a heavy focus on online play. If a game doesn't work, any multiplayer impressions before release are effectively useless.

The Order on the other hand demonstrates that just making a game that functions and looks pretty does not get you a gold star.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Kain is getting paid. Unless you have reason to think he's lying?

https://twitter.com/erikkain/status/568847153860251649

Forbes contributors get paid based on the number of views they generate with their posts. They aren't staffers. There is not much in the way of editorial oversight. I made over $100 from Google ads on a story I posted on BitMob a while back that went viral, but it would be silly to present myself as a member of the BitMob team. It's more insidious in the case of Forbes when they essentially created a community blogging platform that trades on the cache of the Forbes name.

I might be more generous to the Forbes contributors is the guys writing about games there didn't rise to prominence by courting the lunatic fringe by telling Mass Effect Enders what they wanted to hear, and treating GamerGate like they have a valid perspective.

 

[Basileus777]

I think there is some truth to this. Garbage games like Resistance 2 have an 87 on metacritic, and it'd probably be 15-20 points lower in today's environment, like KZ Shadow Fall.

Never understood this way of thinking. A good is a good game. If a game doesn't "hold up" it likely wasn't good to begin with.

Standards change, and video games are a technology driven and iterative medium. It's perfectly reasonable for certain games to age poorly despite being good games when released.

 

[Fallout-NL]

Uncharted 2 from six years ago is more or less at 95 Metacritic. I guess by this logic it would get around 65 if released now.

UC2 is not a poorly paced, kinda lacklustre 'cinematic' experience. It's a pretty fucking incredible one.

 

[Schrödinger's cat]

The key is consistency.

There is no consistent review criteria. It changes with every review. Some reviews love to deduct points for absent modes or features that the game was never going to have, for example. Reviewers are humans like you and me and subject to favouritism and bias like you and me.

But games media constantly needs to legitimise itself and ensure its relevancy. Which is why we get episodes like this one. Then, like a magpie, when the next shiny object appears, they'll flock to that one.

If reviews are intended as meaningful analysis then they are fundamentally broken - simply because they move the goalposts and metrics with every single review.

We're not asking the right questions when we ask about the significance of a review score. It's not about taking notices of a score on a review, it's about how much people are assigning value to someone else's opinion.

This won't be changing and the games media is acting like nothing more than a political party in the run up to an election.

 

[NEO0MJ]

Standards change, and video games are a technology driven and iterative medium. It's perfectly reasonable for certain games to age poorly despite being good games when released.

Yeah. A lot of games from the past such as OOT were huge innovators that introduced things to video games never seen before. They might not seem as impressive now but at the time they were revolutionary.

 

[redcrayon]

The key is consistency.

There is no consistent review criteria. It changes with every game. Some reviews love to deduct points for absent modes or features that the game was never going to have, for example. Reviewers are humans like you and me and subject to favouritism and bias like you and me.

But games media constantly needs to legitimise itself and ensure its relevancy. Which is why we get episodes like this one. Then, like a magpie, when the next shiny object appears, they'll flock to that one.

If reviews are intended as meaningful analysis then they are fundamentally broken - simply because they move the goalposts and metrics with every single review.

We're not asking the right questions when we ask about the significance of a review score. It's not about taking notices of a score on a review, it's about how much people are assigning value to someone else's opinion.

This won't be changing and the games media is acting like nothing more than a political party in the run up to an election.

All critics (and mainstream audiences) suffer from 'emperor's new clothes' syndrome, it's not unique to gaming.

I don't think any games site counts it's scores as the definitive, objective, final word on a game, a review is an opinion piece by definition, and any score a very rough summary of that opinion. I also don't think it's fair to tar all media with the same brush- reviewers aren't obliged to all chime in with each other and value the same qualities in a game. If readers and metacritic are unable to understand that reviewers aren't robots scoring things by a universally understood set of metrics, that's their problem. Personally I tend to stick to the reviewers whose individual opinions have turned out to be pretty reasonable after I've played games they've covered in the past, and even then I take them with a pinch of salt. Same goes for film reviews- the amount of 3-star films I've loved and 5-star oscar-bait ones I thought were utterly tedious (if technically brilliant) just means that reviews are only ever a rough guide for each individual.

That's why metacritic is so awful. It takes a load of numbers, roughly based on individual writer's opinions and number scales where every outlet assigns a different value to them, and then hammers them into a ludicrous framework where one individual's 7/10 is treated as exactly the same as another. Even if one mag always scores high, and another uses the whole scale, and even if the process they used to reach it, and the highlights and flaws they point to, are completely different. 'Garbage in, garbage out' is the phrase in every other data-analysis process. Eurogamer ditching numbers was a good idea, I hope more sites follow them.

 

[King_Moc]

A 95 6 years ago? It's way worse than the original Gears of War and that's from 9 years back, so that seems unlikely.

 

[gconsole]

and yet a game like dragon age inquisition is getting GOTY when it's still the same formula as years ago only the quests are even more generic buti t got a pass because it had good looking open world environments. I guess if you want good scores create an open world with lots of filler quests that you pass off as content and game hours. :/

The ordet problem is how it takes the control away from player. It is not about the game not being open world or dont invent enough. The game suck to be even old formula.

 

[Tulerian]

Un-professional.

That's how I'd describe the majority of the review sites in recent times. There are problems with bias, funding, personal agendas and just plain bad ethics and work practices. This does not apply to all sites, but it's getting worse, and I think funding issues make up a high proportion of the reason it happens.

Games should be marked on their own merits, not because they are not something else they are not trying to be. There are people who like this genre, and others should not be trying to force everything they don't like out of the industry.

In the past review sites and publishers had a team of people who reviewed games in the fields they enjoyed, and we ended up with:

• Genre
• What it sets out to do
• Who it is aimed towards and would enjoy it
• Graphical Accomplishment
• Gameplay
• Enjoyment
• Overall

If people don't like it, then they just move on to another title they do like.

Now we just get people who have no interest in a genre/game just constantly slating it at every opportunity, trying to force their viewpoint on everyone else.

Sad times for the video game industry, developers, and also gamers who will see a contraction of game types to suit a very limited set of criteria to avoid the backlash such as seen by The Order and others recently.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Probably they just didn't spend enough on marketing to get good reviews.

 

[Domstercool]

Changing? I'm not seeing it. Just because a high profile game got a 6, suddenly the review landscape has changed? Baloney.

It's happened in the past as well with Lair.